Current events in the words of the students of Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

The shattering Pixels

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events and/ or publicly available information. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

With the recent growth rate of the search engine and technology giant Google and its hands wide spread in every aspect of technology, no one would even need a TV commercial or a paper advertisement to know about its products. But, lately it seems like the facts are going into the dark and Google is facing some trouble with its flagship mobile device ‘Pixel’. Even with top of the class specifications and premium look, it doesn’t seem like the Pixels are adding up to make a perfect picture for Google.

After around 4 months of the blitzing launch of Pixel smartphone in India – the second fastest growing smart phone market – Google saw only a minuscule sales figure of around 40,000 units. The same is the case all over the world. While the competitors in the premium smart phone segment (above Rs.40,000) like Apple and Samsung are reporting a sales of 70 and 80 million units during the same period, Google had had to settle at 2.5 million units which is surely not a figure one, that too Google, would aim at. (Note that these are the not the official figures announced by the OEMs, but calculated by the experts from the shipping of the devices).

Ground reality says that consumers started viewing Pixel as the next version of Android One, which was also a flagship but a failure project by Google aiming at bringing premium smart phones at budget rates. The fact is, Android One and Pixel stand at the opposite ends of the ledge in all aspects.

The other major reason for failure of Pixel seems to be the strong grip on the premium smart phone market segment by Apple and Samsung. These original equipment manufacturers (OEM) have been in the market since way long before Google decided to launch smartphones right from under its own roof. In-fact, one should mind that it’s Samsung who initially bought a wide fleet of budget range smart phones running on Google’s Android operating system the same which is being used in Pixel devices.
People seems to be reluctant to invest huge bucks on new entrant while Apple and Samsung are already offering market proven premium smart phones like iPhone 7 and Galaxy S7 Edge respectively (though Samsung Note 7 had also proven itself in the market by literally exploding).

All this being one facet of the story, on the other hand the spokesperson at Google had commented that the sales of Pixel devices is as expected. The latter also mentioned that they had received a very positive feedback about the device, thanking the 5-inch full HD screen and the Sony powered 12.1 mega pixel camera sensor at its rear (which is a matter of fact). But still, officially the sales figures are yet to be announced.